This weeks topic is “Focus” and its impossible for me to take on a topic like this without mentioning photography, but I’m also going to bring up a self-discovery that surprised me.
But first, a photo.
Tilt shift is a special way of intentionally pulling the focus in such a way that a real life shot resembles a model shot. This particular shot is actually done with a digital defocusing technique used to simulate a physical focusing technique.
Of course, new technology (as in recent weeks) may mean that focusing a camera will be a thing of a past. The new Lytro camera is a “light field” camera which used to require a super computer and a room full of camera fifteen years ago to pull of what is now available in a smaller than usual hand-held camera. Essentially you take your shot, and then go home to focus your shot. Needless to say, their pictures are worth a few hundred normal pictures in raw disk space on its memory card.
Now leaving photography for a while, a touch of personal life being brought in to focus.
I followed a link from Twitter to The Journal (well we did have an election recently and the #Aras11 hashtag is still an interesting place) and got caught up in a reader’s survey. One if the questions was “What websites (excluding Google and social networking sites) do you visit?”
I was stumped. You see, I don’t visit websites regularly; websites come to me. I tend to use my RSS Reader, Twitter and Google Plus links and links from e-mails. I don’t visit websites. If I stumble across a site of interest, it gets added to my RSS reader feed and from then on, the updates come to me. If there isn’t a feed, there is a risk that I’ll never return. Yes this sounds like a follow up to the Felicia Day mini rant, but I was shocked when I realised that I’m no longer a web browser.
I used to maintain a wiki of sites to visit. At some point its became a OPLM list. And the sad thing is I can work out the exact day it happened. May 26 2007. Election day for the 30th Dáil, in the Mallow count centre. And it took another election for me to notice.
Once it meant to chop something inexpertly (obviously after seeing me carve), then it became to make something designed to do one function go and do another function. Related to this is making a computer or a piece of software work to your bidding and not the bidding of another, such as the manufacturer. Or the actual owner.
So I hacked so hardware.
As in I went to the hardware shop to get some screws.
Did you expect me to talking about me doing something illegal (and not just illegal in certain US states)? And so to the subject of this Loose Blogging Consortium post “Things I Don’t Tell About Myself”. I’m going to show you an Ikea Hack, and show you something few have seen; my bedroom.
This is what my bedroom, and bed looked like before I changed things. A little dull? Oh yeah. The “headboard” is actually a piece of carpet offcut from when I moved in.
Anyway, time to change things, and Ikea opening in Ireland gave me the chance to check out the classic “as is” section for stuff to use for a hack. It won’t be the best headboard Ikea hack, but its mine.
Six wood screws (as the ones which came with the legs were too meant for a different purpose), Six washers and a few felt pads to protect the wall.
A screwdriver and a drill to make guide holes for the screws.
Simply attach the legs to the back of the door using the pre-drilled holes in the legs with the screws to make a support, add the felt pads to protect the wall, and its done.
Remove the carpet “headboard” and move the new one in to place. But I went a bit further…
I added a touch of colour to the room with,
A Flyn Beata printed curtain (now discontinued but you could use any fabric):
A picture hook (already in position), a piece of string and a long bamboo pole left over from a garden project.
Attach the string to the pole, clip the curtain clips on to the pole (it worked better to clip rather than to slide as, well, bamboo is not a smooth metal pole) and attach the fabric.
Then the bed looks very different.
Since the photo was taken I’ve tightened the hanging string and added additional hooks so the pole is now level and against the ceiling, which means the panels hang better now.
It was a fairly easy job,but it changed the room completely.
The picture which was above the bed turned out to be the perfect fit for a Saxas frame and now hangs elsewhere in the room.
Well it is not something I share with many people, so I think it counts as “things I don’t tell”, but since you asked…
This came up in a conversation on a TOG mailing list. Its source was the comment by a electronic image manipulation project and the possibility of getting extra marks from the use of stenography to hide messages within the exhibition.
What came to my mind was, well , why not create a QR Code of the message and then generate a photo-mosaic of the QR code using the exhibition pictures as the mosaic source.
He asked for an example…
Here you go…
To generate this you need three things.
1) A large collection of photographs (or pictures) in electronic form.
2) A QR code and
3) Photomosaic software.
Photomosaics have gone out of style, so that might be why it hasn’t been done before.
In my case, I took a lot of photographs of the recent Cork Pride Festival. So my source were about 400 of the festival’s photos that were uploaded to FaceBook.
Then I needed a CQ Code. I used the Kaywa generator. Not for any particular reason, I just wanted a quick QR code. The code above, when scanned will link to the Cork Pride Festival site.
So then I needed the generation software. I used the portable version of the Andrea Mosaic Software. It could be more intuitive, but its free with the only request being “give a shout out to Andrea Mosaic” if you use it. Perfect for an example.
So, there is the example, let me know if you have any problems scanning it. The larger version is hosted on Pix.ie, but at 5mb image meant for A3 printing, I’m not going to be e-mailing it to anyone other than the Cork Pride media team to add to their archive.
So how long before you see it being used in an advert folks?
Today is Mothers Day, or Mothering Sunday, in the UK and Ireland. Somehow the idea of the little man with the lady showing through seems right for today.
Well it was either that or the “Behind every great man is a great woman, rolling her eyes at what he’s up to”.
The shot is from Pope’s Quay opposite St. Mary’s Church. I have no idea why the walking-tour man is cut out of the signs, but now I know about them I’m going to have to keep an eye out for them to see what else lies through them.
My Mother’s Day was last weekend, because I’m getting up at silly O’clock to go on a charity cycle for Africa Direct. Its a 25 mile cycle, and for me the scary part is that its my first proper cycle of the year (i.e. one not involving a trip down to the shops). Its a good (mostly flat) take-it easy training cycle. And I know I will be knackered at the end of it.
Hopefully in a good way.
Then I’ll have to phone Mum. If the oxygen mask doesn’t get in the way that is.
